'Sunglint' Silhouettes Northeast Coast in Astronaut Photo

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The coast of the northeast United States is silhouetted against
the shimmering water of Cape Cod Bay and Long Island Sound in a
new photo captured by astronauts on the International Space
Station.

The phenomenon of light from a setting sun reflecting off water
to create a shining, mirrorlike surface is called
sunglint, and is evident throughout the photo.

"The Atlantic Ocean — including Cape Cod Bay and Buzzards Bay,
along the coastlines of Massachusetts and Rhode Island — has a
burnished, mirrorlike appearance in this image," the NASA's
Earth Observatory wrote. "This is due to sunlight reflected
off the water surface back towards the astronaut-photographer."

The photo was taken on Feb. 14 at 4:26 p.m. EST by the space
station's Expedition 34 crew, which includes commander Kevin Ford
of NASA, as well as U.S. astronaut Tom Marshburn, Canadian
astronaut Chris Hadfield, and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy,
Evgeny Tarelkin and Roman Romanenko.

At that time of day, the sun was low on the horizon, as evidenced
by the wide extent of the sunglint effect, which reaches all the
way from Long Island Sound to the waters of Chesapeake Bay, more
than 250 miles (400 kilometers) away. From the vantage of the
International Space Station, 260 miles (420 km) above Earth, much
of the region is visible, as well as the limb of the planet and
its thin atmosphere fading away into the blackness of space.

On the photo's right side, the waters off the Massachusetts coast
and in Long Island Sound are especially bright where the peak
reflection point is, according to the Earth Observatory.

The photo shows the northeast United States just days after a
powerful blizzard blanketed many areas in heavy snow on Feb.
9.

"There is little in this image to indicate that the region was
still recovering from a major winter storm that dropped almost
one meter (three feet) of snow over much of the northeastern USA
less than a week earlier," the Earth Observatory wrote.

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